This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"How do you find the happiness that you want?... Do those things which give you the deepest, most exquisite feelings of joy... It isn’t what you do for yourself that really makes you happy, though it may give you justifiable pleasure, but what you do for others." - Norman Vincent Peale
"It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain." - Oliver Goldsmith
"We are slow to believe that which if believed would hurt our feelings." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"When one’s mind is religiously awakened, one feels as though in every blade of wild fern and solid stone there is something really transcending all human feelings, something which lifts one to be a real equal to that of heaven. He plunges himself into the very source of creativity and there drinks from life all that life has to give. He not only sees by taking a look, but he enters into the source of things and knows them at the point where life receives its existence." - Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
"The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art... Great poetry may be made without direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely... It is not the “greatness,” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, to so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts." - T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
"There can be no substitute for elemental virtues... only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that there can be no substitute for the world-old commonplace qualities of truth, justice and courage, thrift, industry, common sense and genuine sympathy with the fellow feelings of others." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us with the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense." - William Hazlitt
"Do not allow another person’s evaluation affect your feelings of self-esteem... Being an honored person is dependent on your behavior towards others and not on other people’s behavior towards you. Why feel any lack of self-worth just because someone acts disrespectfully to you? Keep your focus on your behavior towards others. When someone does not treat you with respect, it is his problem, not yours... Ultimately, it is your mind that decides on how you will consider yourself." - Zelig Pliskin
"Hiding your faults from others so they won’t correct you might save you from momentary unpleasantness, but you will remain with your faults... Fear of criticism stems from inferiority feelings... If you feel hurt by someone’s criticism, remember it is your choice to feel hurt. You can choose self-statements that allow you to feel grateful for the opportunity to improve yourself." - Zelig Pliskin
"Many people consider the happiest days in their lives when they received the applause and acclaim of others. But the fact they needed someone else’s approval for their happiness makes them dependent on others. Someone who can find happiness even when he is insulted is assured of having a happy life. Once a person knows that he is able to experience positive feelings even when insulted, he is free from the fear of what people might say to him. This can give a persona feeling of liberation. If you believe someone else’s words cannot hurt you, they won’t." - Zelig Pliskin
"Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use. " - Emily Post, born Emily Price
"The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results. " - Florence Nightingale
"But while human liberty has engaged the attention of the enlightened, and enlisted the feelings of the generous of all civilized nations, may we not enquire if this liberty has been rightly understood? " - Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
"Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities." - Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
"Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier, and simpler. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Acknowledging experience and reflecting feelings are helpful interpersonal skills. However, they are not tricks or gimmicks. Nor can they be used mechanically. They are helpful only within a context of concern and respect. In human relations the agents of help are never solely the techniques, but the person who employs them. Without compassion and authenticity, the techniques fail." - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
" Man's nature is evil; goodness is the result of conscious activity. The nature of man is such that he is born with a fondness for profit. If he indulges this fondness, it will lead him into wrangling and strife, and all sense of courtesy and humility will disappear. He is born with feelings of envy and hate, and if he indulges these, they will lead him into violence and crime, and all sense of loyalty and good faith will disappear." - Hsun-Tzu NULL
"Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole. " - Jacques Barzun, fully Jacques Martin Barzun
"Propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life. It furnishes him with a complete system for explaining the world, and provides immediate incentives to action. We are here in the presence of an organized myth that tries to take hold of the entire person. Through the myth it creates, propaganda imposes a complete range of intuitive knowledge, susceptible of only one interpretation, unique and one-sided, and precluding any divergence. This myth becomes so powerful that it invades every arena of consciousness, leaving no faculty or motivation intact. It stimulates in the individual a feeling of exclusiveness, and produces a biased attitude." - Jacques Ellul
"All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it. " - Jean Cocteau
"To give heart and mind to God, so that they are ours no longer - to do good without being conscious of it, to pray ceaselessly and without effort as we breathe - to love without stopping to reflect upon our feelings - such is the perfect forgetfulness of self, which casts us upon God, as a babe rests upon its mother's breast. " - Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
"We must not measure the reality of love by feelings, but by results. Feelings are very delusive. They often depend on mere natural temperament, and the devil wrests them to our hurt. A glowing imagination is apt to seek itself rather than God. But if you are earnest in striving to serve and endure for God's sake, if you persevere amid temptation, dryness, weariness, and desolation, you may rest assured that your love is real. " - Jean Grou, fully Jean Nicholas Grou
"Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues, not by the power of those which subdue him... Cultivate consideration for the feelings of other people if you would not have your own injured. " - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain" - Jim Morrison
"My feelings are not God. God is God. My feelings do not define truth. God’s word defines truth. My feelings are echoes and responses to what my mind perceives. And sometimes - many times - my feelings are out of sync with the truth. When that happens - and it happens every day in some measure - I try not to bend the truth to justify my imperfect feelings, but rather, I plead with God: Purify my perceptions of your truth and transform my feelings so that they are in sync with the truth." - John Piper, fully John Stephen Piper
"One who lacks a sense of justice lacks certain fundamental attitudes and capacities included under the notion of humanity. Now the moral feelings are admittedly unpleasant, in some extended sense of unpleasant; but there is no way for us to avoid a liability to them without disfiguring ourselves. This liability is the price of love and trust, of friendship and affection, and of devotion to institutions and traditions from which we have benefited and which serve the general interests of mankind…by understanding what it would be like not to have a sense of justice–that it would be to lack part of our humanity too–we are led to accept our having this sense." - John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights." - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
"Motivation and inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in the right direction as control mechanisms do but by satisfying basic human needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control over one's life, and the ability to live up to one's ideals. Such feelings touch us deeply and elicit a powerful response. " - John Kotter, fully John Paul Kotter
"And, in fact, if these crimes appeal less to the senses, they appeal more to the mind; and the mind, in the last analysis, is the profoundest part of us. For the novelist, therefore, there is a new type of tragedy to be derived from these crimes, more intellectual than physical in character, which do not really seem to be crimes to the superficial judgement of old materialistic societies because they do not involve bloodshed, and murder is committed only in the sphere of feelings and manners." - Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
"Man ... differs from all other animals in having a brain which can and largely does bring all the various elements of experience into contact, instead of keeping them in a series of wholly or largely separate compartments or channels. This not only provides the basis for conceptual thought, and so for all man's ideas and philosophic systems, ideals and works of art and creative imagination, but also for his battery of complex sentiments unknown in animals, such as reverence and religious awe, moral feelings (including hate and contempt arising from moral abhorrence), and love in its developed form." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"If the universe is a non-spatial computer, a ‘time machine' is a program that allows a user to have the same (ontologically non-spatial) feelings or experiences that occurred or s/he merely feels to have occurred in the past, with an in-built function to have different feelings or experiences than those of the past, and thus creating a possibility to change the past or to rewrite history in a pseudo sense." - Kedar Joshi
"Reason and understanding concern two levels of concept. Dialectics and feelings are involved in reason." - Kurt Gödel, also Goedel
"The first thing men do when they have renounced pleasure, through decency, lassitude, or for the sake of health, is to condemn it in others. Such conduct denotes a kind of latent affection for the very things they left off; they would like no one to enjoy a pleasure they can no longer indulge in; and thus they show their feelings of jealousy." - Jean de La Bruyère
"Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"The most human thing we have to do in life is to learn to speak our honest convictions and feelings and live with the consequences. This is the first requirement of love, and it makes us vulnerable to other people who may ridicule us. But our vulnerability is the only thing we can give to other people." - Leo Busacaglia
"Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart." - Leroy Brownlow
"In general, kids have very little tolerance for humiliation or failure. One of a student's most important goals is to make it through the day without embarrassment. Imagine then, the frustration of children with differences in learning, who are at risk of growing up deprived of experiencing success. Naturally, they compare themselves to their peers and siblings. While some may see themselves as "different," many will feel inferior. Unfortunately, these feelings are likely to endure. When they do, serious complications can develop including plummeting self- esteem, behavior problems, excessive dependence on peers, alienation from family, deep anxiety, and a loss of motivation. The sad reality is that a difference in learning, not addressed as such, can lead to anti-social behavior, substance abuse, dropping out, and other serious forms of maladjustment." - Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
"Among all the emotions, the rich have the least talent for love. It is possible to love one's dog, dress or duck-shooting hat, but a human being presents a more difficult problem. The rich might wish to experience feelings of affection, but it is almost impossible to chip away the enamel of their narcissism. They take up all the space in all the mirrors in the house. Their children, who represent the most present and therefore the most annoying claim on their attention, usually receive the brunt of their irritation." - Lewis H. Lapham
"It is my opinion, that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of Government and legislation whatsoever. The colonists are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen...The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power...When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty,—what? Our own property?—No! We give and grant to your Majesty, the property of your Majesty's Commons of America...The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty...There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in this House...Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom?...Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough?—a borough which perhaps its own representatives never saw.—This is what is called the rotten part of the constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop, it must be amputated...I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest...The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when were they made slaves?" - William Pitt, Lord Chatham or Lord William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, aka The Elder Pitt and The Great Commander
"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"First feelings are always the most natural." - Louis XIV, aka Louis the Great or Sun King NULL
"A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place." - Luigi Pirandello